Rev. Susan Maginn
Wy'east Unitarian Universalist Congregation
August 26, 2007
Some of you may have read an
article in the Oregonian last month about Bishop Carlton D. Pearson.
He is a fourth generation evangelical preacher. Some years ago, Bishop
Pearson did something radical. He said that God would not condemn anyone
to hell. This was big news in his fundamentalist circles. In fact he
lost much of his following.
But I was amazed that this was
in the newspaper! That something as seemingly antiquated, as universal
salvation would make the secular news.
Our Universalist heritage was
named for this doctrine of universal salvation, we started it, in a
way, over two hundred years ago. This was a time when hell fire theology
was all the rage and, sadly, very few people were going to make the
cut into heaven - a very exclusive place indeed.
Our radical ancestors, called
Universalists, preached that God's nature was pure love and that God
would never condemn human beings to eternal hell. So we are the ones
who organized around this teaching of universal salvation and yet the
Oregonian is talking about it much more than we are. Maybe its time
we returned to dust off salvation and see what is there for us today.
When I think of exciting theological
concepts, and I am excited by theological concepts, salvation really
isn't one of them. It seems outdated to me. As if salvation is something
that our tradition figured out long ago and moved beyond. When
I hear contemporary people talk about salvation I just assume this is
a way of seeing God that I don't relate to. When someone asks, "Are
you saved?" I assume that they see God as a punisher and a decider.
God as an all-knowing being who determines who is naughty or nice in
the world. I just don't experience God that way. I should note that
many Christians, Jews and Muslims don't experience God this way either.
What bothers me most about this
perspective of salvation is that it shows God's primary concern as
being what happens after we die. As if this world, this here and
now world, is disposable. It is just a testing ground in the eyes of
God.
World, farewell! Of thee I'm tired,
Now toward heaven my way I take;
There is peace the long-desired,
Lofty calm that nought can break;
World, with thee is war and strife,
Thou with cheating hopes art rife,
But in heaven is no alloy,
Only peace and love and joy.
I don't want to belittle this
theological view necessarily. There is much comfort in this view for
people who suffer greatly in this world and need to look to the next
life to feel a glimmer of hope in this one. Chronic illness, poverty
and injustice could certainly find a great balm in being able to see
peace and love and joy coming their way, even if it is in the next life.
I am concerned that, regardless
of your religious persuasion, that this way of seeing the world as disposable
has, through the centuries, seeped its way into the water table of our
current cultural consciousness and has become the foundation for much
of why we, as a culture, have been so sluggish to wake up to the need
to be gentle with the earth and honor our place, right here, right now.
Not waiting for the afterlife.
Once I asked my Jewish step-father
what he saw as being the biggest difference between Jewish and Christian
understandings of God. Without missing a beat, he said, "Well, for
Christians, if you do something wrong, then God will get you after you
die. But if you're a Jew and you do something wrong, God'll get
you Tuesday."
If my step-father is correct
in his profound theological assessment, then Jews and UUs have something
in common. We Unitarian Universalists place much more concern on how
heaven or hell, or whatever you want to call it, is being created in
this world, right here and now. Salvation becomes a matter of saving
the world, creating beloved community with justice in human relations
and respect for the interdependent web of life.
Before I start digging into this,
I want to be clear about a huge red flag that I see in this whole 'saving
the world' thing. We have an affinity for hero mythologies. We see
these hero myths in how our histories are told, in blockbuster films,
in the fairy tales we tell our children. These stories are all about
salvation. One person is helpless and another reaches out and saves
them and is then celebrated, often with a wedding of some kind for some
reason.
And we don't just see these
salvation stories in fairy tales and movies. We also see the hero's
journey in the Bible, of course. God saves his people from slavery in
Egypt and delivers them via Moses to a promised land. Jesus is seen
as a savior and the language of savior is used many times in the Hebrew
and Christian scriptures to depict the nature of the divine. And Biblical
stories have had the biggest impact on our culture. So it is no wonder
that we would see God as a saving force and then we would also as a
culture come to revolve around seeing ourselves as a hero in the world,
capable of stopping evil-doers.
Don't get me wrong. There is
nothing inherently wrong about saving people or even being a hero. But
the trouble comes when we don't see that we are not just the hero
and someone else is in need of being saved. It goes back and forth.
I learned this a couple years
ago. I was leading a social justice project at a UU congregation where
I was in St. Louis. There were many people who wanted to see our UU
congregation called Eliot Chapel develop a partnership with Meacham
Park, a nearby neighborhood with a rich history, largely lower income
and African-American. I met with the Meacham Park neighborhood association
(MPNA) and we began developing ideas for a future partnership between
the two communities. The project ended up having three components: getting
some lawyers from Eliot to look at the legal issues some of the Meacham
Park residents had with the city. Another piece was creating a documentary
of long-time residents of the community. Still another piece was partnering
with other churches in the neighborhood to do some rehab work for some
people who could not afford it.
This was a fantastic project
but I missed the boat on something. I saw Eliot as being the savior.
I saw this wealthy congregation as being the one with the resources
to 'save' the poor community. In retrospect, I think this project
would have been much better if I had seen both communities in need of
giving and receiving salvation. The opportunity that I missed is that
I never considered what the Meacham Park neighborhood association could
offer Eliot Chapel. And so, as you might imagine the relationship didn't
go far beyond those projects.
But that was years ago. That
was four years ago.
My current understanding of salvation
in the here and now has something to do with seeking transformation
in our life, in our homes in our congregation and in our world.
When we are seeking transformation
in our life, we are experiencing moments of healing, wholeness and awakening.
I believe that each of us has the capacity to save and be saved. And
if that is the case, then true salvation, the salvation in the here
and now, is actually within us; within each of us. We just have obstacles
to knowing its presence. We have obstacles to being able to fully experience
the force that can bring that healing, wholeness and awakening. But
I bet if we took a moment to ask everyone, if you have felt that presence
at some moment in your life, some of you, and I would guess with some
conversation, most if not all of you, would know what I am talking about.
Some of you might have a beautiful
story to tell about being in the shadow of pure grace. Perhaps it was
in the forest. Perhaps it was sitting at a loved one's deathbed. Perhaps
it was attending a birth or giving birth. Some call this experience
enlightenment. Some call this experience a functioning of the brain
that predisposes all human beings to mystical levels of consciousness.
Some call this experience, God. Some call this experience a feeling
of utter dependence (Schleiermacher) or an oceanic feeling (Freud) or
simply awe.
This is heavy stuff. Salvation
is within you. For those of you who have faced or are facing great hardship,
you know how this goes. You know that when faced with true devastation,
nothing, no one can truly save you. No one can take away the diagnosis.
No one can take away the news of the accident. No one can take away
the addiction.
A friend of mine just found out
that she might have Multiple Sclerosis and as she told me this news
she said, "When I found out, I had to look inside and ask. OK. Now
is the time. What have you got, girl? What have you got to face this?"
When she asks "What have you got girl?" she is not talking about
her material resources to pay for her care or anything like that. She
is talking about her spiritual resources. She is talking about her sense
of character and the source of her strength to face something as daunting
as a chronic and potentially disabling disease. She explained how she
could not control anything that was happening to her. She couldn't
control the numbness in her legs. She couldn't control the lesion
on her spine. She could not control that she currently does not have
health insurance. She could only control, she said, how she is going
to be, how she is going to react in the face of these new realities
that are looming so large in her life. When she put it this way with
such a radical sense of responsibility, suddenly the ball is in her
court and she has choices, perhaps even some hope in a world, by many
other vantages, could look hopeless.
My friend has a long road with
this one. None of us know how this is going to go for my friend. But
we do know that wherever it goes, my friend won't go alone. We can't
take these symptoms away. We can't keep the diagnosis from landing
upon her. We can't save her, but we can be there for her as she finds
her way through all this. And maybe this is saving her. I don't know.
Now, this is all about our individual
experience with salvation. And as much as I have to acknowledge that
the individual level is where anything begins, this is also a big concern
I have about the notion of salvation. For so long the predominant understanding
of salvation is, "How do I save my self?" "Is my
soul going to be saved?"
I don't think that true salvation,
is about any of us as individuals. When it comes to saving the planet,
for example, if one of us is lost, none of us are found. I don't believe
that as individuals, there's much that we can do on our own. But as
a community, ... now there is something different.
This is why we are together.
A congregation that is able to steer itself and set its communal priorities
is called a free congregation. All Unitarian Universalist congregations
are examples of a free congregation. And a free congregation is a body
of people who have covenanted regularly to pay attention together to
that is worthy of their collective love and devotion. This devotion
is focused on what we are saving in the world, and in that experience
of devotion, we ourselves are saved. Paying attention to what is worthy
of our love and devotion is an act of pure joy. It defines what our
most high values are. It defines how it is that we, as a community,
express those values and bless the world with our very living. This
is why I believe that a people who reason together, bound by a covenant,
in the spirit of love...this is the greatest hope for the world.
This is why I stand before you today. I'm a minister in this tradition
because I really believe in the saving power of this tradition.
I believe that we are about the business of salvation... right here,
right now.
This is a thrilling time to enter
into this congregation as we ask what is our congregational covenant.
What are we committed to and how is being a part of this community going
to affect your life. Entering this place is risky business, challenging
you to live the values that you say are worthy of worship and devotion.
That is what being a member of this congregation is about. It is not
so much about what you believe, but how we, as a community, live out
those beliefs. The emphasis is on deeds, not creeds. It is not just
about signing a membership book and pledging money. It is knowingly
entering into a covenantal relationship with these people and asking
what do we value and how do we live it? This is what much of this year
is going to be about: clarifying what we, as a community, value and
how to we live this. And our worship services then become an expression
of worshipping and further exploring what we, as a community, most value.
One thing we are going to be
talking about this year is how do we have open hearts and minds and
also know what our resources are and what our limitations are in a world
that has so much need. I don't think we as a congregation can save
the world from suffering. But we can come together to encourage one
another to stay awake as we see the suffering and to grapple with what
we see and how we respond. This is pure joy. This is salvation.
We are all figuring this out: how do we live lives that bless the world, that save the world and are saved by the world? We need not ask these questions alone. We do not know where the asking of such questions will take us, but we do know that as long as we are in this community, wherever the asking of such questions takes us, we won't go alone.